


Postcard Path

by Missy



Category: Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead (Movies), Evil Dead - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Demon Slayer(s), Emotional Constipation, Gen, Protective Siblings, Queer Themes, Siblings, Trauma Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 05:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7029976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ash and Cheryl's close sibling bonds are tested by the rules of travel - and sudden romance for Cheryl, which she tries mightily to resist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Postcard Path

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



There’s no way she can talk about it without seeming completely insane, so she doesn’t. Not for a long time, not until she can convince herself that she didn’t make it up, that it wasn’t the effect of the joint Scotty had slipped her when they'd partied down. Ash’s severed hand and her scarred body are pretty decent testaments to the reality of it all, but laughing deer heads? Dancing corpses? Some things simply aren't easily believed.

Half the jury at their televised murder trial suddenly turning into Deadites provides the best evidence of all.

“You didn’t say the words right, did you?” she hisses, and he rolls his eyes and takes aim.

 

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They end up buying a condo with the money they get from suing the Knowby Tust. There’s a level for him and a level for her; room for her canvases and her clothing, her books and her memories. Ash’s interests are less prosaic; revenge and anger. She can’t blame him but it worries her anyway. There’s a picture of Linda that he keeps on his dresser and it confronts Cheryl every single time she visits his world, his pizza-laden, girly magazine-sprinkled world. 

It’s a strange place to live in. Good, but very odd. She deals with the women he brings home and ignores his night terrors, the same way he tries to ignore her weekly scream-laden nightmares.

 

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It’s her idea to start hunting for monsters. 

He’s the one who unleashed them on the world, but it’s Cheryl who wants to fix the wrongs they’ve written and make life safer for the children who suffer in their wake. She manages to wrest a copy of the book from the Knowby archive, and he tricks out his old car to make it into a mobile death vehicle. In the end it feels very, very Scooby Doo.

She points this out whenever he lets out a post-kill ‘Groovy’.

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Cheryl doesn’t pretend to know how to stop it. But she tries to fix the hole anyway, taking Latin and trying to turn the tides with her lips and her mind. Ash just takes lessons in shooting. Tries to encourage her to take them too. But guns always make her feel sick. 

“Get a knife then, kid,” he encourages. In the end she picks up a sword and learns her upper body strength is her salvation.

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

They press the memories into a photo album. The roadhouse in Texas they turned into a blood fountain; the church in Germany that ended up being a haven for a cult base on Deadite worship. They manage to surprise her every damn time, no matter how hard she tries to steel herself against the inevitable, the icky thump of a body hitting the ground.

Ash takes souvenirs; a bullet, a tooth, a memory. The scars are never hers alone to hold and remember.

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

The destiny is theirs, shared. If he said the words wrong then she was the one who foolishly followed the sound of a strange voice. If he was the one who cut his own hand off than she was the one who ended up sacrificing something more personal.

 

Dating is difficult, close to impossible. She thinks – worries – that it’s written all over her face anyway. 

That’s why she keeps hers buried in a book most of the time.

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

She meets a woman with dark hair and glasses when they find themselves scoping out the same church. All of the monsters the girl's ever seen have been men in rubber masks, she explains, as they split a strawberry soda. What Cheryl would do for such comfort! What she would do to have all of her monsters be the lie of a child, an angry man – to have it all be false and untrue as a parent making up stories for an infant to hide what they cannot comprehend. 

The girl wants the danger Cheryl represents; the truth she holds out, though it is an ugly and horrifying one. Cheryl only provides her help because she feels the girl needs it; anything else feels like a half truth, a flaw as clear as the crack in her glasses. So she shows her the book and sees knowledge calcify and clarify her eyes.

They make out with it forgotten beside them, spread wide against the chilly red-brown soil.

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Three is not an easily divisible number. There’s little choice for Cheryl in this battleground of loyalty. Ash keeps his mouth shut for once (mostly), and he actually behaves in a supportive manner (mostly). But he needs Cheryl on the team – her knowledge, her sensitivity to Deadite presences. The girl, she’s survived without them for years. She can probably do without Cheryl.

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

There’s so much to be seen out there – hills and valleys, snow and fire. The girl’s reaction to it all is a muffled exclamation of surprise. Ash has learned to smirk and keep his opinions to himself. It never works out well for him when he opens his mouth to share them with Cheryl's girlfriend.

Not that he’s actually going to have an opportunity to share them for much longer. They’re going to leave her in the next city over.

Cheryl’s idea. She hasn’t bothered to discuss it with Ash yet.

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

And this is why. “Don’t you dare push that woman away. She can handle herself, she knows what she’s getting into, and this might be your only shot at real love. If you don't hop to it you’re gonna lose the whole ball of wax. Don’t be like me, Cher. Don’t let love pass you by.”

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

They don’t leave he at the gas station.

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

She shoots her first Deadite in the brain four days after they make their way to Manitoba. She doesn’t blow on the barrel or make a scene like Ash – she’s not that cool.

She actually throws up later on. 

But in the end there’s the road and her brother, and her whole soul, intact and shining like a jewel. And her love, and the sold feeling of the world that she loves revolving away under her feet. A centering in the madness and the chaos, by some brilliant miracle.


End file.
